site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Sexually successful men dont hate women, they just don't treasure them, and treat them how [sexually successful] women treat men; as disposable.

I guess it depends on what you mean by hate. "I hate you personally and want to hurt you" is pretty rare, but "I consider you to be a disposable object to be used, and your feelings on the matter are irrelevant because you're not really even a person" is a kind of contempt near enough to hate as to make little difference.

Abusive men don't hate women, they hate the world and women just can't resist being around them for some mysterious reason.

I think some abusive men are just misanthropists who hate the world and take it out on those they can (which are most often their partners and children), but some abusive men definitely do hate women and take out their lack of success (sexual and otherwise) on them.

Or by "men who hate women" does she mean that don't soyfully agree with generic feminist talking points? I once ended a relationship over watching The Imitation Game, of all things. "Ah, here's Kiera Knightly reprising her role as a modern woman trapped in the past" was apparently such a hateful comment that it got me a continuous diatribe about women's suffrage until I flat-out got up and left. I wonder if that was proof that I hated women.

I dunno man, but you have so many of these anecdotes, the punchline always being that a woman rejected you for inexplicable and irrational feminine reasons (usually relating to you talking about how much you resent all things female). Do you actually like women? I mean as people, not as things you want to fuck? Pardon the blunt phrasing, but that is kind of what the "men who hate women" construct is getting at. I sometimes hear men who clearly despise women deny it and say that of course they love women, when what they really love is sex with women, and the fact that there is a woman involved in the process seems to be an annoyance to them.

Only thing I can say is I've had two real loves in my life, and most of the reason I loved them was because they had qualities and virtues that I was in awe of. And plenty of those qualities were feminine.

And by now I frankly want companionship, validation and physical comfort more than I want to get off. I find myself disappointed that so few people will let me in, or show me anything that's really theirs and not a regurgitated soundbite.

I consider you to be a disposable object to be used, and your feelings on the matter are irrelevant because you're not really even a person

This is how I treat my toilet paper. However I would not say I hate my toilet paper at all, in fact I am usually very grateful that it is present (assuming no bidet etc.) and would be very upset if it were missing.

Hate requires having a certain intensity of feeling and even if we were talking about particularly poor toilet paper I've got better things to do than give the requisite number epicycles to thinking so hard about the toilet paper than I can reasonably say I hate it (perhaps if it were the toilet paper used in all the toilets at my workplace so I used it on a daily basis then yes I might dedicate enough cycles, but if it's like a toilet in a shopping mall I rarely ever visit then sorry, I don't have the brain cycles to waste on hating the toilet paper).

For someone who's very sexually successful they may well have better things to do than waste their limited number of brain cycles on what exactly their next sex partner thinks, no different to how I have zero desire to waste brain cycles on what the guy sitting next to me on the train thinks, purely because of how abundance makes humans value things less, no hate involved (were the guy next to me on the train the only person I'd met in the last month I'd probably care about what he thought, but under current conditions, he's just an "eh").

This is how I treat my toilet paper. However I would not say I hate my toilet paper at all, in fact I am usually very grateful that it is present (assuming no bidet etc.) and would be very upset if it were missing.

Well, as I just explained, "hate" in the sense of harboring personal animosity isn't the same as "hate" in the sense of considering someone to be less than human, but I don't think women who claim men hate them are wrong when pointing to men who think it's appropriate to regard them as equivalent to toilet paper.

It all depends on how much one has of one thing vs the other because we value things based on marginal and not absolute utility. If someone easily has access to say 50 women for sex but no toilet paper (or substitutes like a bidet) then they are completely justified in valuing a deluxe 9 roll pack of toilet paper more than a 51st female sex partner. They are certainly justified in spending money they would never do on the 50th woman to ensure the toilet paper is kept in a warm, dry place because it's no great loss to them if this woman disappears for whatever reason like it would be if their toilet paper got all wet and unusable.

You're just belaboring the equivalence. Obviously, if women are just commodities to put your dick in and produce babies (and I'm well aware there are people here who unironically believe this, though in your case it's hard to be sure whether you're serious or trolling) then yeschad. However, I would suggest it does not serve your purpose to act out the caricature of the dude who spawned the smarmy feminist "Women are human" meme.

Yes, I agree women are human. I just do not agree that being human gets you special exemption from the internal valuation process we all use to decide how much we care about a thing. If the devil came to me and gave me the choice that either Michelangelo's David gets crushed or a random human being named David gets killed I'd choose to save the work of art in a heartbeat. Inanimate objects can have higher value than average humans and recognising this doesn't mean you are demeaning these other humans, you are merely putting them in their rightful place in your personal hierarchy.

I'm actually in agreement with you that for most people they should value a sex partner higher than toilet paper (because toilet paper is easier to access than sex partners), all I'm saying is that we can think of edge cases where this is not true and it's not because the edge case is a woman hater, they are merely a personal utility maximiser and in their situation getting access to toilet paper brings them more value than access to yet another woman.

Well, I just disagree with you. I am not talking about utilitarian calculations about the value of a Michelangelo vs. the value of some random person, I'm talking about the equivalence you keep insisting on making between women and toilet paper, which you're doing just to be provocative. If that is your mindset, that you literally regard them to be in the same category (disposable commodities that are of value depending on abundance and your need), you can argue all you like that you don't "hate" women, but I don't think women would be wrong to see it otherwise.